Thakkar

8 hours ago, nev said:

Bunch of snowflakes, Take his comment in a positive way and take a look at yourselves.

 

That’s a lot of inanity packed into two little sentences. I trust you’ll take my comment in a positive way.

12 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

The founding fathers recorded their thoughts in the Constitution.

 

Rather than second guess their thoughts, read the Constitution.

 

Reading?? Aw man, when I joined TVf they told me there weren’t gonna be any tests! This is bullsh!t.

1 hour ago, Uptooyoo said:

When candidates "squeak by" they always have low poll numbers. 

All presidents, regardless of margin of victory, make some attempt to bring the country together, and, at least initially, succeed in improving their poll numbers. This not only good for the country, but good for them, if only because it makes it easier for them to pass whatever their agenda is. Trump not only made zero effort to bring the country together, he continued to divide the country from the getgo. He’s the only president I can remember whose poll numbers showed no significant improvements after the election.

2 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

 Trump has been under a barrage of attacks from those who will not accept the results of the last election.

Boohoo. Ask Obama.

2 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

He got a clear mandate from the people who voted for him

In politics, that’s not what “mandate” means.

2 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

And he's done better than any ticking-off the check boxes of his campaign promises

And exactly what campaign promises has he kept? Of his major promises, the main one he’s kept is lower biz tax rates. No surprise there. I guess that’s really standing up to “Wall Street, Hollywood, and corporate cronys” and standing “up for the working class,”

and, btw, “the hinterland” does not have a “vast electorate” unless you’re talking waist size.

2 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

You claim he as "accidental" 

Yes. As the Mueller Report verifies, even Trump never expected to win. That’s why he continued negotiations on Trump Tower Moscow. I believe The Apprentice negotiations were still active. Even Trump said something to the effect: “was I supposed to stop my business, what if I didn’t win?”

The margin he won by is so small that the Russian interference could well have swung the election for him. According to The Mueller Report:

“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion... a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that [favored Trump and disparaged Clinton]...the [Russians] conducted computer-intrusion operations against [the Clinton campaign] and then released the stolen documents...the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts...”

3 hours ago, heybruce said:

It is my position that people who support Trump lack sufficient interest in the future of the US to follow real news--the kind that points out that the Mueller report explicitly did not exonerate Trump and that informed all interested parties that Obama released his birth certificate early in the 2008 election. 

 

People who don't take the trouble to inform themselves about basic issues regarding their country don't care about their country.  Even the ones who grope and dry hump the US flag.

 

Many pro-Trump posters admit that they like Trump for his entertainment value and the fact that he annoys people who think about the future of the US.  They not only rarely cite facts, they rarely respond to facts presented to them.

*applause*

5 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

Another chart proving the Trump-haters right. Just a nation full of right-wing, white nationalist, immigrant haters.....oops....on closer look...maybe they left. They've obviously moved to the countries lower on the list.

 

Here’s the right way to read that chart. I will refer to the US, to remain at least somewhat on topic.

20% of Americans think negatively of immigrant. Almost double that think positively of immigrants.

Inter-country comparison in this regard are not very meaningful as each country’s situation is different. For example, most foreigners in Vietnam have little hope (or desire?) of becoming citizens. They are expats, and perceptions of expats is different from perceptions of immigrants. Also, their numbers are relatively small. In a country of 1.2 billion like India, the immigrant dilution is such that the question is mostly meaningless.

Bottom line: most Americans who even bother to consider this matter, have a positive view of immigrants. The xenophobes are in the minority. This is why Trump lost the popular cote by a large margin, and why he has failed—despite his self-touted successes and a happily booming economy—to lift his poll numbers. It is unprecedented for a president presiding over such economic numbers to have poll numbers this low.

4 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

I suppose rising to the highest office, in the most powerful country, isn't to be used as a measure of "future success." If you do regard being president is a measure of success, then you've proved your point about a GPA not being so important, but equally disproves that one needs to have honesty and a work ethic to be successful, your other point.

A little Russian help wouldn’t hurt eaither.

2 hours ago, Uptooyoo said:

3 hours ago, Thakkar said:

 

ALL presidents who squeak by on very narrow electoral college wins and who lost by wide popular margins, have, by definition, no popular mandate. They are accidental, the proof being, it has only happened very, very rarely, 

I thought vice presidents became accidental presidents, namely Johnson after Kennedy's assassination. It's new to me that presidents become accidental because of their low poll ratings, or become hated by the opposing party. I guess Obama was accidental too

Where did I say “low poll rating” or “hated by the opposing party?”

Argue with what I said, not with stuff you make up yourself. You can do that in the mirror, on your own time.

2 hours ago, mogandave said:

 

Something wrong with shining shoes? I shined shoes for two years, and made pretty good money doing it.
 

 

“Something wrong with shining shoes?”

Only if you were also owned, lynched and raped by the guy whose shoes you shined. Were you?

12 minutes ago, Nigel Garvie said:

I basically like what you said, but not sure if you understood what I was trying to say. Although I am an old white guy, and accept that I have been privileged in many ways, I am in the opposing camp, and would much rather old codgers like me were put out to grass (Make mine kif from the Rif), and power was handed over to young men and women of any colour. They may lack experience, but have not yet had time to become jaded, twisted, and utterly corrupt, examples of that are numerous in almost all countries. The PC/victimhood/safe space idiocies are for those under 55 in my experience.

 

Your point essentially about "Why didn't they colonize us" is covered in the great book "Guns, germs, and steel" by Jarred Diamond. However if you want to remove the levers of power now, you will have tear them from the current world leaders dead hands. I offer to help when the've stopped moving!!

I guess I was unclear. I was responding to two separate posts simultaneously which is why I included both in my post—one that I agreed with (yours) and the other, I didn’t agree with. You understandably mistook my response to the other post as a response to yours. My apologies.

I’ve read Diamond’s book, twice, as well as his lesser known (and frankly, less impressive) works. That book fundamentally changed my thinking on a number of things, and was instrumental in my constantly advising my kids to, like Jared Diamond, take up an interest in multiple disciplines if they really want to understand the world.

Cheers.

“America 2019, where the president's sexual assault victim gets pushed out of the news by the president's concentration camps for children, which gets pushed out of the news by the president's child-sex-trafficking bestie which gets pushed out of the news by the president's racism”

1 hour ago, Uptooyoo said:

Accidental? That's funny....it seems he was elected, and is quite possibly on his way to being re-elected.

And, btw, you are addressing my argument by picking on the word “accidental?” And ignoring the main point that your premise is flawed at its core?

19 minutes ago, Uptooyoo said:

5 hours ago, Nigel Garvie said:

It is probable that they may love their country, but they want to help to make it better for their fellow citizens. No country is perfect you may have noted, some countries have obnoxious leaders, like yours for example. I would suggest though that since he picked on 4 colored women it should be a bit of a giveaway as a racist attack, even to Trump supporters, who they tell me tend to be a sandwich short of the full picnic.

 

BTW I misread your pseudonym first time, accidentally reversing the syllables, easily done. Might I humbly suggest that you could have chosen better, of course it's "Dam jai koon"

In America you would be branded a racist because you called them "colored women" instead of "women of color." That's how crazy it is in America. 

Yes. But only if one didn’t read the entire post and simply took those two words completely out of context to make a pointless point about political correctness.

21 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

I don’t think Trump’s supporters are entirely clueless regarding his actions.

 

What he feeds them is hatred and cruelty. The more hatred he spews and the more cruelty he displays the more they support him.

 

Hatred and cruelty are the whole point of his Presidency and the whole reason for the support he receives.

Hence: Deplorables